Ok. This is my last post regarding the MoveOn.org ad. But I have one thing to say to all these Right-Wing politicians, websites and blogs that are demanding that every Democratic politician from Harry Reid to the local dogcatcher distance themselves from the ad. (See this, this, and this).
Mahablog has a great post pointing to a number of times Right Wingers have called Democrats "traitors." And I don't remember anyone requiring the Republicans distance themselves from the statements. I have one addition to Mahablog's list: Ann Coulter. She wrote a book that, in essence, accused all Democrats and liberals of treason. Yet she continues to appear on Fox News (including, strangely, Your World - a business show) , and get invitations to gatherings such as the CPAC convention. I can only assume some brave soldiers in Iraq, and some Generals are Democrats - maybe even liberals. So MoveOn.org only insulted one person in uniform; Ann has insulted thousands. I assume that all Republican candidates will now distance themselves from Ann Coulter.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Coulter and MoveOn.org
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6 comments:
Justification is lame, and that's what you're doing. What Ann Coulter does is bush league, polarizing blustering politics. Its horrible. The left is better than that, and the actions of Moveon shouldn't be justified by the actions of Ann. Both are wrong, and justification doesn't make it less so.
Sherpa accuses me of justification. Maybe I should have repeated what I said in the immediately preceding post that the MoveOn.org as was "unwisw and unwarranted." But I did not think repetition was necessary, especially given that the post was about Right Wing inconsistency and not Left Wing foolishness.
Petraeus is not a politician, thats why its not comparable.
YOU WROTE: "Mahablog has a great post pointing to a number of times Right Wingers have called Democrats "traitors."
***WTF are you talking about? All Maha found was some obscure quotes by the American Computer Science Association, a California Conservative blogger named Gary Gross ands Dave Gibson from the "American Partisan" website WHATEVER THE HELL THEY ARE? Have you ever even HEARD of these folks, I sure haven't!
HOW ABOUT SOME **REAL** EXAMPLES of PROMINENT POLITICIANS QUESTIONING OTHER AMERICANS' PATRIOTISM?
HERE YOU GO:
Wesley Clark based most of his primary campaign on questioning President Bush's patriotism. He said of Bush's landing on an aircraft carrier, "I don't think it's patriotic." He said that Bush had failed to do his duty to protect the country, and "if you're patriotic, you do your duty." He said of Iraq, "I don't think it was a patriotic war."
Clark had plenty of company last week. At a Democratic event, Michael Moore bellowed of Republicans: "They are not patriots. They are hate-triots." By which he means, presumably, that they have substituted hatred of the opposition for love of country. From the podium, Ted Kennedy denounced "false patriots," and Howard Dean criticized those who fly "under a banner of false patriotism." The implicit message from both was clear: Republicans aren't true patriots.
This fits a pattern. Back in May, Teresa Heinz Kerry called Dick Cheney "unpatriotic." Sen. Bob Graham has said that Bush's Iraq policy was "anti-patriotic at the core." New York Rep. Nita Lowey has called Republicans "unpatriotic" for cutting taxes. Howard Dean, again, has said that Attorney General John Ashcroft "is not a patriot." John Kerry himself has said that it was "unpatriotic" for Bush's "friends" in the corporate world to outsource jobs overseas. For good measure, Kerry has called those corporate leaders "Benedict Arnold CEOs."
Given the nature of their incendiary charges against Bush, Democrats are almost forced into questioning his patriotism. If Bush really lied the country into a war of choice to boost his own political fortunes, he is a treasonous scoundrel. If the Bush administration creates terror alerts to provide itself political cover, as Dean thinks, it is an unpatriotic monstrosity. If Bush is a "fascist" — as Dean and prominent environmental activist Robert Kennedy Jr. suggested last week — he is un-American.
Republican elected officials and the Bush White House don't similarly impugn the Democrats' patriotism. Even if they were so inclined, they wouldn't dare, because the media would flay them alive for it. Designated Democratic martyr Max Cleland — who was given a primetime speaking slot last week because he supposedly lost his Georgia Senate seat on charges that he is unpatriotic — would have been better off if Republicans had actually questioned his patriotism instead of his Senate votes. Cleland could have easily beaten back that over-the-top charge. His record, on the other hand, was harder to defend.
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Go tell "Moron Maha" to go chew on those for a while hmmm? 8-)
Thank you, ANNonymous!
Bush is a treasonous scoundrel, and the administration is an unpatriotic monstrosity!
Your words, not mine.
Ann Coulter sold her soul to the devil, one day she'll just wither away into dust, like in the movies.
"Anonymous" boldly calls me out. My response:
First, there's a huge leap from accusing someone of being "unpatriotic" and accusing someone of treason. Not at all equivalent.
Second, I didn't spend a lot of time looking for documentation, but since you asked, I spent another five seconds googling and found:
Here's a columnist at NewsMax who calls Jimmy Carter a traitor.
John Hinderacker of PowerLine didn't use the word "traitor" but said Carter is "on the other side."
Of course, we're used to this from righties. Ann Coulter thinks liberals are traitors (see her book, Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism) and Jonah Goldberg thinks liberals are fascists (see his book, Liberal Fascism). See also this vintage Crooked Timber post, "Since the beginning of time, liberals have yearned to destroy the sun."
On top of that, it's not impossible to find righties calling President Bush a traitor. A columnist at WorldNetDaily (you have heard of World NetDaily, I assume? called President Bush a traitor to the Constitution because he signed McCain-Feingold into law. I documented more such accusations in this post. This is usually in reference to his immigration policies.
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